Tuesday, October 21, 2008

With 14 days to go, I'm asking myself how ugly can it get. I've got an Obama sticker on my motorcycle. I park it inside at night and outside my window during the day at work. I'm worried it won't make it unscathed till Nov 4th.

I'm pretty sure that if I were about to vote, having angry people shout mean nasty things about my candidate might just turn me off even more from their candidate.

I have to ask Roger Farina, what difference does it make if people vote on Sunday? Not planned? I can see your thinking - people are coming from an Obama rally directly to the polling place. Sounds like a scam? Not really. Not to me anyway. This has to have happened on most election days at some time in the past, a rally followed closely by voting.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Yesterday I spent 2 hours in Kay Hagan's Raleigh office making phone calls to undecided voters. My mission: find out if they've decided and ask if I could answer any of their questions if not. I must have "dialed" 200 homes. About 100 actually picked up. 40 said hello. 20 said they'd talk to me. 12 were Kay Hagan and Barack Obama supporters, 5 wouldn't answer, and 2 were decidedlly not with the dems.

Of these last two a couple things were intersting. The first guy, and both were males, said he just didn't think either we qualified. Fair enough I said, but do you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president? He hung up on me.

The second's first question: "are with acorn?" No I said. The conversation went downhill from there. In the end he hung up on me after proclaiming "you give them some wine and a dollar bill and they vote D all the way down the line."

Truth be told, I had no idea that wine goes so well with democrats. It wasn't until later I realized by "them" he likely meant black folks. Yeah they are just drunken fools who sell their vote for a dollar. What was I thinking?

To all those who think voting is a waste of time or that it is ok to toss your vote by going libertarian or voting for Mickey Mouse - please take a moment and think. If you don't counter balance the idiots out there, who will. If you don't counter balance those you disagree with by voting, who will?

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Oh wow, this is exactly the conversation I had at work last week. I compared our own "ultra right wingers" to Telaban and al Qaeda types. I said they use the same tactics and feel justified in almost any action that begets their ends.

These people have always scared me. I recall the time in my teens when Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door. I was staying alone at my grand parent's house on Long Island. These two young men came to the house. Now, I was from a small town in Vermont - population 710 at the time - so I had never seen this type of thing before. They said their thing, and I think I said, "Are you serious?" I spoke with them for a while trying to convince them of all the other good they could be doing rather than worrying about what religion people followed. Sheeze, what a waste of time.

Flash forward 18 years and I see more and more people who just live hate. Not the Jehovah's witnesses mind you, they may be wasting my time and theirs, but they aren't out to kill to get their way. The point is, both the religious right wingers the old school racists all scare the daylights out of me.

Look, McCain's campaign is getting so full of hate he had to calm the crowd down - lest someone go out and kill Obama.

What am I doing about it? I've supported Obama with cash and time. I've even adorned my MotorCycle with an Obama sticker - that was the toughest thing I did for the guy. Now this week I'm taking it local - on Thursday I'll be manning a phone for Kay Hagan because I don't like Dole's supporters. In other words, I'm not going to attack the crazies directly - instead I'm going to work for candidates that don't support them and are not supported by them.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Periodically I google my name, my user name, my kids names etc to see where they might show up. This time a picture of Amanda from my Flickr account showed up on a website from Japan.

It was right next to one with another young girl putting lipstick on. That photo could be seen very easily as provocative. The rest of the blog had lots of posts about random photos and artsy exhibits from around the world. Some of it explicit.

Of course I was not happy to have my little girl's photo on a web site that:
a. I didn't know about
b. has basically pornography on the same page

I emailed the pages owner. Instead of asking him to take it down, I just asked how it got there. He said:

I'm sorry.
My English uses the translation software, it is not easy to understand.
Is your daughter's photograph this?
http://hugo-sb.way-nifty.com/hugo_sb/2007/06/061407amandasel.html
I found this photograph from Flikcr.
I liked this photograph very much.
And, I copied this photograph onto my blog.
This photograph is very cute and lovely.
It apologizes for my use of your daughter's photograph without permission.
Do you demand to delete this photograph from my blog?
If you demand, I will immediately delete it.
Thank you.
Hugo Strikes Back!

OK, seems harmless enough. Still, yikes. I'm going to have to think about all my online photo sharing and see if I can lock it down a bit more.

Google's picasso has a way for you to put photos on line and send a special link to people That link has a key, and only people with the correct link can see the pictures. That adds a level of security... I'm going to ask Hugo to delete the photo. I'm going to remove it from flickr as well.

I'm an Electrical Engineer, graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology. I work for Apple, on the some-such platform.
I have a wife and two kids.
Since you're here, leave a comment, I'd love to know what you think.
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